Amazing Women

The name Millicent Fawcett or Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett born the 11th of June 1847, and died the 5th of August 1929 aged 82, was one of the U.K’s ‘Amazing Women’ a forerunner in the feminist movement she was an intellectual, a political leader, an activist and writer. She was a leading suffragist and was instrumental in securing votes for women in 1918. Her belief was that peaceful protest using non-violent demonstrations and petitions to MPs, would achieve better results than violent confrontations.

The eighth of ten children Millicent came from a very close and happy family in which the children were encouraged to read widely, speak their minds and be physically active. In a time when ‘Women should be seen and not heard’, they were also encouraged to share in the political interests of their father.

Her older sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson another Amazing Women, faced an almighty uphill struggle to become the first female doctor in the UK, and this fight spurred her on in her campaign for female equality.

She became the president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1897, this group joined together with other suffrage groups including Emmeline Pankhurst’s suffragette movement.

In 1918, the Representation of the People act was passed granting voting rights to only some women in the UK, to be allowed to vote you had to be over 30 years old and hold £5 of property ( a small amount by today’s standards, but an insurmountable barrier for some Women of the time) or have a husband who did.

In 1928, voting rights were then extended to all women over 21 in line with men, and Millicent who was 81 years old at that time, watched on in the public gallery in the House of Commons as the bill was passed.

A bronze statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square in London, holding a banner on which is written the phrase “Courage calls to Courage everywhere”, stands as a reminder to all of us that it is thanks to Amazing Women like Millicent the World over that we have in most countries the right to Vote and to gender equality.

A poll held by BBC Radio 4 saw Millicent Fawcett chosen as the most influential women of the past 100 years.

So to all the Amazing Women World wide, our Mothers, Grandmothers, Sisters, Aunts, Teachers, thank you for for showing us the way and for teaching us that “Courage calls to Courage everywhere”.

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